From the 1930s to the
1960s, Trans people were understood to experience a congenital
physical condition, and after appropriate clinical intervention, they
had full civil liberties in their real sex. Their Birth Certificates
could be corrected, they could marry if they wished, and live
otherwise ordinary lives. In the late 1960s, however, two events
contributed to a massive change in that status. First – and
ironically at the point at which gay men were decriminalised in the
UK, in 1967 – in the USA, John Money announced that he had solved
the dilemma of whether nature or nurture decide our gender.

One of a pair of twin boy
babies had accidentally been penectomised during circumcision, had
been reassigned as female, never told of his reassignment, and
brought up as a girl. Money, a self-styled ‘missionary of sex’
announced that, after long-term follow up, the girl had successfully
adjusted to her new role and that it was, therefore, nurture and not
nature that decided the gender of people. Incredibly, on the basis of
one single case, that view became the dominant one. It was clear by
analogy that Transsexualism was not congenital, and that Trans people
should respond to nurture if it was persistent enough and firm
enough.

Second, in 1970, the case of Corbett v Corbett ‘criminalised’
Trans people by removing civil status recognition from them. The
effect of that trial was comparable to the effect of the trials of
Oscar Wilde and of Radclyffe Hall: it produced ‘a brilliantly
precise image’ of the Trans community, a ‘grafting of a narrow
set of cultural signifiers’ onto an ostensibly homogenous body of
Trans people. In the public imagination, Trans people would always be
Trans women [so that Trans men became invisible] and Trans women
would always be, in the judge’s terms, ‘a pastiche of
femininity’, a sort of teapot-elegant drag-queen, a kind of figure
of fun. Equally seriously, Trans people were no longer allowed to
correct their Birth Certificates, could not marry, could not adopt,
were sent to the wrong sex prison [where Trans women at least were
routinely raped by male inmates and warders alike] and it became the
norm for them to be dismissed from employment as soon as their
condition was disclosed, whether at diagnosis or later. With further
irony, in 1980, as homosexuality was removed from the American
Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Registered Mental Illnesses (DSM), Transsexualism was placed in it,
to confirm by medicine this new edict of the law.

The first response of the
UK Trans community was to feel crushed, and the second was to
organise.

... in 1998,
in the USA, Professor Milton Diamond discovered the real outcome of
John Money’s iconoclastic research: the child who had been
reassigned as a girl had never been happy in the female gender role;
he had always experienced his gender as male, despite his female
rearing, and female hormone treatment, and as soon as he was able he
had reassigned to his male identity. John Money’s findings for his
research were revealed as being grossly inaccurate at best, but not
before a generation of tertiary specialists had been at least
misdirected by someone who, for many of them, had been their mentor
and pre-eminent amongst them. From the point of view of Trans people,
of course, a generation of patients had been inadequately and
inhumanely treated.

By the way, this does not agree with Milton Diamond's version of it… but you have to pay close attention to what he does not say about the sad case of David Reimer.

thanks,- AnneRose

PS: As I suffered deeply through yet another episode of maltext-induced Repetitive Eyeroll Disorder in reading "As Nature Made Him," I concluded with growing horror that Reimer must have been a CAH case — from his abnormal degree of aggression FOR A BOY even before finding that his treating endocrinologist came to hold a similar opinion.

Me, I was hypoandrogenized on top of benefitting from a feminized brain due to a maternal fever suffered around the 24 week of pregnancy.

About Me

Actually, I am a Rocket Scientist.
Also hormonally odd (my blood has 46xy chromosomes anyway) and for most of my life, I looked male, and lived as one, trying to be the best Man a Gal could be. Anyway, in May 2005 that started changing naturally for reasons still unclear, and I'm now Zoe, not Alan : happier and more relaxed not to have to pretend any more.
UPDATE - reason now identified as the 3BHSD form of CAH.

Reviews

This blog, written by a rocket scientist, is a fascinating collection of information, both personal and scientific, regarding intersex, transsexualism and related psychosocial and psychosexual issues....It is erudite and heartfelt. Just read the posts about the passport issue. You won't know whether to laugh, weep or crawl into a ball and rock gently in a corner - an amazing person.- David---The reason I so appreciate bright, perceptive people - as opposed to ideologues whose intelligence does little to illuminate - is that they manage to both instruct and learn with a certain grace. Among such rarities in the transblogosphere is Zoe, whose direct speech and clear humanity always make her worth reading, even if one doesn’t always agree with her every conclusion.- Val---The following is a request for permission to archive your A.E.Brain blog site which we have wanted to do for several years...The Library has traditionally collected items in print, but it is also committed to preserving electronic publications of lasting cultural value....Since (1996) we have been identifying online publications and archiving those that we consider have national significance....We would like to include A.E.Brain blog site in the PANDORA Archive...-Australian National Library